Herbalife

First off, this is not a post about me going the stoner lifestyle, growing my hair out, joining a commune and stop bathing; this is about me taking a step to be a healthier me.

I've posted before about joining a gym to try to lose a gut that I've had most of my life, if not all of it since before high school and I'm in my early-30's now, so I've had it for quite some time.  The only change I've done to get in shape, was to join and go to a gym to workout.  Through that alone, I lost some weight but not a whole bunch.  What did end up happening was I slimmed down some.  In high school I wore size 42 pants and up to the point I decided to stop drinking Pepsi by the gallons and to start some exercising, before joining a gym, I stayed that in that size of pant.  Once I quite drinking soda, I lost 20 lbs just from that, which was from 250 lbs.  After buying a weight set and through some pedal pushing, went 230 lbs. and size 42, down to 226 and size 38.  For about a year my exercising slowed down but I still managed to lose weight, got down to 216 lb and size 36 for a short time.

I've been going to a gym now more regularly since my last posting on the matter but still have not managed to slim down to where I would like to be.  Most of that is because of diet, I like to eat, which is not the best way to lose the pounds or slim down, regardless if you exercise like an inmate, so to combat that, I've started doing Herbalife.  This decision wasn't brought on by some research or an article read somewhere or even from an ad I saw, but from a friend.  Last year he weighed in at 345 lbs in Oct. as of Feb of 2012, he is down 55 lbs by using Herbalife.  He no longer needs to take high blood pressure medicine and not because of Herbalife, but because he is eating better through the system, his body has been given the resources to heal itself.

After talking with him and deciding how much I would like to lose, I purchased a system for myself.  The system replaces two meals with shakes that you make and with a balanced third meal, you will lose weight.  I started on Monday February 13th and as of, Wednesday the 15th, have lost 1 lb, down from 221 lb to 220 lb.  Now, that may not seem like much but to me it is quite a bit.  I have been instructed to eat 1500 calories and 150 grams of protein a day, which I have found to be difficult, with the me liking to eat, having snackage readily available to me at work.  With no longer eating in the employee cafe, which is free to us, I am not taking in as many calories as I used to and not as much protein either.  I just have to find the sweet spot to grab the necessary protein without all the calories.

To help me track all of this, I downloaded an app to my phone call MyFitnessPal.  With it, you can track what you eat, how much, your workouts, water intake and it will tell you the nutrients you've taken in for the day based on what you put in.  Bonus is, you don't have to guess or read the labels for the information, it has a search function that looks up the items.  No more guessing or tracking in a notebook.  Oh, it's also free and you can use it on a regular computer as well.